Satya Venugopal

This is a devastatingly beautiful, poignant look at how someone grieves in the aftermath of the death - by suicide - of her husband. The subject matter means it is not an easy read, and if you have a strong, negative emotional response to the subject matter, you may want to give this book a miss. Otherwise, the novel is well worth the difficulty and effort it takes to get through it. It is also, wonderfully witty and laugh-out-loud hilarious at times! It is filled with characters who show such love and support for the protagonist - named Eve - and each other. Eve is from a close-knit Nigerian (Igbo) British family in London. The highest praise I can give the novel is to say that it and its characters are incredibly human. The one thing that's slightly cliché about the novel is that the antagonist is the "evil" mother-in-law. But even this turns out to be a minor gripe, as Eve comes to recognise - and thus, so do we - the three-dimensional humanity of the mother-in-law character by the end. And there is some growth on the mother-in-law's part as well.